1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique effectively applied to a magazine to be mounted in a cartridge autoloading device for a magnetic tape drive unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cartridges having magnetic tapes wound and accommodated therein are generally used as external storage for a host computer, and a cartridge autoloading device in which the cartridges are accommodated several-by-several in a magazine and are inserted/ejected to the drive unit from the magazine by using a carrier unit to load these cartridges into a drive unit is well known.
In this type of cartridge autoloading device, after several cartridges have been accommodated in a magazine outside the autoloading device, the device door is opened to mount the magazine thereinto. Thereafter, until all the processing on the cartridges received in the magazine is completed, the cartridge itself cannot be removed from the autoloading device.
Therefore, if a user desires to replace any of the cartridges received in the magazine, he must wait for the completion of all of the processing of the magazine. This will not improve the processing efficiency.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-stated problems, and its object is to provide a magazine structure from and into which a necessary cartridge can be removed and inserted while the magazine is mounted in an autoloading device.
The present invention provides a loading device comprising: a magazine capable of accommodating a cartridge in stacked tiers, the magazine having cartridge locking means provided at each tier for regulating the back-and-forth movement of the cartridge; and a carrier unit disposed at the rear of the cartridge, the carrier unit having a pair of guide means.
Since the magazine has cartridge locking means at each tier, the removing/loading operation from/into the magazine is permissible on the cartridge basis while unloaded cartridge may not be carelessly removed. Further, the lock mechanism is operated with a guide arm of a carrier mechanism such as a carrier unit in the loading device, so that the locked state of the cartridge can be released by opening/closing the guide arm of the existing carrier unit.